Date of Award
5-2008
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Legacy Department
Applied Psychology
Committee Chair/Advisor
Pilcher, June J.
Committee Member
Switzer, III , Fred S.
Committee Member
Pak , Richard
Abstract
The effect of sleep deprivation on cognitive task performance is becoming more important in today's society. Because of this, how total and partial sleep deprivation affect performance in the workplace needs to be better understood to increase awareness of how employees are able to perform. In addition, employers need to know if employees are able to accurately judge how sleep deprivation is affecting their own performance. The purpose of the current study was to compare the effects of total and partial sleep deprivation on actual and self-assessed performance on a logical reasoning task. Two studies, one under total sleep deprivation and one under partial sleep deprivation, were conducted. Each study examined participant performance on a logical reasoning task. Upon completion of the task, participants indicated how many questions they thought they answered correctly and how confident they were in that assessment.
The results of this study suggest that while total sleep deprivation negatively affected performance on a logical reasoning task, partial sleep deprivation had no effect. Employers should be aware that employees who have experienced total sleep deprivation will be unable to maintain logical reasoning performance. When asked to estimate their own performance, participants consistently gave values that were higher than the actual values. Participants also remained very confident in their self-assessed performance estimations. In other words, if an employer asks employees to rate their performance, they will do so with a great level of confidence, even though their self-assessed performance values are likely to be higher than their actual performance values.
Recommended Citation
Vander wood, Melissa, "Actual and Self-Assessed Performance on a Logical Reasoning Task after a Night of Total or Partial Sleep Deprivation" (2008). All Theses. 318.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/318